Ukraine will build 5M drones in 2026. NATO must learn how: deputy commander
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- Air Chief Marshal Johnny Stringer, NATO's deputy military commander, said Ukraine will produce "well north of 5 million" drones in 2026, up from 5,000 in 2022, and challenged the alliance: "if 32 nations can't kind of meet those figures, then frankly, what do we do?"
- Operation Epic Fury (the U.S. war on Iran) has so depleted munitions stockpiles that prior assumptions about availability are "now, in a sense, a little bit moot," Stringer told the Global Air and Space Chiefs Conference in London.
- Coalition forces fired over 11,000 munitions in the first 16 days of the Iran conflict at a cost of about $26 billion, according to a Royal United Services Institute report cited at the conference.
- Royal Air Force head Air Chief Marshal Harv Smyth said more Patriot missiles were expended in the first few days of the Iran campaign than during the last four and a half years in Ukraine.
- The Iran conflict destroyed or damaged at least 42 aircraft, including F-35 fighters and E-3 Sentry airborne early-warning planes, per a Congressional Research Service report, prompting Stringer to caution sixth-gen programs against focusing solely on "flashy aircraft."
- Stringer said the U.S. can no longer expect to simultaneously fight and win two separate theater campaigns, telling attendees: "we're going to have to prioritize. We're going to have to make choices."
Why it matters: NATO faces a scale reckoning: Ukraine alone will manufacture over 1,000 times more drones in 2026 than in 2022, while the Iran war burned $26 billion in munitions in 16 days and exhausted Patriot stockpiles faster than four and a half years of Ukraine fighting — forcing the 32-nation alliance to choose between fewer exquisite platforms and the mass-produced alternatives Stringer said deliver lethality at far lower cost.
